This invention relates to the locating of mobile terminals by a recording server, and to the recording and synchronising of a mobile terminal with a system for location mobile terminals.
Users of mobile terminals such as for example mobile telephones, Smartphones and digital tablets increasingly use messaging functionalities via internet, and this in order to, in particular, reduce the costs linked to exchanging messages via the cellular networks and to access extended functionalities that are made possible by using the internet network.
In such a message system, each mobile terminal is recorded with a recording server which is used as a communication relay and it is therefore required, when a mobile terminal A wants to transmit a message to a mobile terminal Z, that the recording server, with which is recorded the mobile terminal A, locate the recording server with which is recorded the mobile terminal Z in order to transmit the message to it.
Such locating is usually carried out by means of a system for locating mobile terminals which is thus a system subjected to a very high load when the service is used.
It is therefore advantageous to distribute the operation of this system over several servers.
For this purpose, architectures of the domain name system or “DNS” type (used for example over the internet network) are known which consists of a tree structure wherein a server to be located is identified by means of a domain name representing the path to be travelled in the opposite direction, for example “trac.mgm.streamwide.com”.
Architectures of the telephone network type are also known, wherein the communications are directed by identifying telephone number prefixes.
Such architectures operate by prefixes and/or suffixes and therefore carry out a distribution of the users according to a telephone number or a domain name.
Consequently, these systems do not make it possible to easily transfer users from one recording server to another since the address (domain name or telephone number) is registered in memory and conditions the routing to be carried out.
The possibility of transferring mobile terminals between several recording servers dynamically (“on the fly”) is useful for example during ramping-up stages of the message system but also to optimise the distribution during operation as it makes it possible to best organise the location requests and the routing of messages, for example by recording mobile terminals which communicate frequently together on the same recording server or neighbouring recording servers.
There is therefore a need for a system for locating mobile terminals that allows for an easy transfer of mobile terminals between recording servers as well as a distribution of mobile terminals between the recording servers according to a set of criteria that is wider than a simple telephone number or domain name, for example according to the type of mobile terminal, to the messaging application available on the mobile terminal, to the load of the recording servers, etc.